For many years, ice-makers have been operated in order to make ice for cooling beverages or food using a wide variety of evaporators and condensers. Generally, the heat extracted from the water in order to form ice has been discarded either through the employment of an air-cooled condenser or a water-cooled condenser.
With the fairly recent significant increase of energy costs, greater consideration has been given to recovering this hitherto wasted heat. For example, the August, 1980 issue of Popular Science carried an article entitled "Free Hot Water From Your Air Conditioner or Heat Pump". A section in the book, Industrial Energy Management, T. E. Smith, 1979, Ann Arbor Science, Ann Arbor, Mich., concerns the recovery of the heat of compression for use in various heating applications. More specifically, a hot gas heat-exchanger is discussed which is designed to extract heat from the hot gas discharged by a refrigeration compressor, along with the use of that heat to warm water. The book goes on to indicate that such hot gas systems typically recover only about 5000 BTU's per hour for each 12,000 BTU's per hour of refrigeration.
Ice-making equipment generally is operated in restaurants, motels, hotels and the like all year around and stands as a ready candidate for the economical supply of heat for a water-heating or pre-heating system. The efficient and economical adaptation of ice-making equipment to the heating of water is desirable.